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II. COMPUTATIONAL APPROACH
Fridolin HEIDLER The electromagnetic computations are carried using
University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich
Department of Electrical Engineering, EIT 7
the computer code “CONCEPT”, which has been devel-
Werner-Heisenberg-Weg 39, D – 85577 Neubiberg, Germany. oped during the last two decades by the Technical Uni-
E-mail: Fridolin.Heidler@unibw.de
versity Hamburg-Harburg [2]. This computer code is quency regime, the frequency step is increased to Δf = 3
based on the so-called Method of Moments (MOM) [3] kHz up to 2 MHz. In the highest frequency regime be-
and is written in FORTRAN 77. It is a well-known com- tween 2 MHz and 20 MHz, the frequency step is further
puter code in the area of electromagnetic computations, increased to Δf = 4 kHz.
and has been validated by several tests [2, 10]. This com- As a general rule, the dimensions of the wires and of
puter code solves the complete Maxwell’s equations in the patches should not exceed about λ/8, where λ is the
the frequency domain. Therefore, the time-domain solu- wavelength of the highest frequency considered. In the
tions of currents and voltages are obtained from the in- paper, the highest considered frequency of 20 MHz corre-
verse Fourier transformation. The fundamental assump- sponds to the wavelength of 15 m. Consequently, the
tions of the computer code are given in [2] and the han- wires and patches were subdivided into segments with
dling of the program package is described in [8]. maximum dimensions of 2 m.
Down Down
Corner Center
conductor Corner conductor
loop wire
Center loop
wire
a) Structure dimensions: Length 20 m, width 20 m, height 10m a) Structure dimensions: Length 20 m, width 20 m, height 10m
Points of strike
Points of Meshed air
strike termination Flat metal roof
system
b) Structure dimensions: Length 20 m, width 20 m, height 20m b) Structure dimensions: Length 20 m, width 20 m, height 20m
Points of strike
Flat metal roof
Points of strike Meshed air
termination
system
13
12
12 13 1 2
10
11
1 11 3 4 9
2 10 5
3 4 9 6 8
5
Corner wire 7
6 8 Down
Corner 7 conduc-
loop Center Down
wire conductor
c) Structure dimensions: Length 60 m, width 60 m, height 10 m c) Structure dimensions: Length 60 m, width 60 m, height 10m
Fig. 1. Structures with meshed air termination system of 10 m x 10 m Fig. 2. Structures with flat metal roof and down conductors with 10 m
mesh size and down conductors with 10 m interspacing. interspacing.
20m x 20m x 20m 0,33 0,32 0,22 Fig. 4. Examples of induced voltage waveshapes
60m x 60m x 10m 0,39 0,32 0,22 The peak values of the induced voltages are listed in
the tables II and III. In case of meshed wire air termina-
tion systems the highest voltage is always induced to the
In case of the structures with meshed air termination
corner loop, when lightning strikes the corner of the roof.
systems the values for kc according to IEC are in good
But also the voltage induced to the center wire is remark-
agreement to the values calculated, the maximum devia-
able high in case of a strike to the roof center. For these
tion being 18 % in case of the large 60 m x 60 m struc-
two worst cases the induced voltage does not increase
ture. Fig. 3 shows the percentage current share p = in/max /
linear with the structure height. Doubling the structure
iB/max to the down conductors for the large 60 m x 60 m
height results only in an increase of the induced voltage
base structure. The numbering “n” of the down conduc-
by a factor of roughly 1,4. Comparing the two 10 m high
tors can be seen from fig. 1 and 2. Obviously, the down
structures shows that the worst case voltages are fairly
conductor at the corner and its immediate neighbours
independent of the base dimensions.
carry the bulk of the current, while the rest of the down
In case of the flat metal roof structures with a 20 m x
conductor diverts only 5 % or less of the incident light-
20 m base the induced voltages are pretty much the same,
ning current to ground. It should be noted that also in the
independent on the point of strike and the induction loop
case of the metal roof a remarkable part of the incident
location. Only the large 60 m x 60 m base structure shows
current flows through the corner down conductor (about
higher induction in case of the corner strike. The induced
22 %), although it is clearly less compared to the case of a
voltage increases almost linear with the height of the
meshed wire air termination (about 40 %).
structure: Increasing the structure height from 10 m to
40 20 m the increases voltage by about a factor of 1,9.
p 35
a
TABLE II
30 PEAK VOLTAGES FOR MESHED WIRE AIR TERMINATION
[%] 25
Peak voltage [kV]
20 Structure Induction
Point of strike
15 size to
b Corner Side Center
10
20 m x 20 m corner loop 1770 628 506
5
10 m high center wire 471 426 1030
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 20 m x 20 m corner loop 2490 1140 1140
n
20 m high center wire 737 657 1390
Fig. 3. Percentage current distribution to the down conductors for the 60 m x 60 m corner loop 1780 155 243
60 m x 60 m x 10 m structure, lightning strike to the roof corner
a) Meshed air termination b) Flat metal roof 10 m high center wire 257 247 1120
TABLE III
PEAK VOLTAGES FOR FLAT METAL ROOF u
Peak voltage [kV] A
Structure Induction
Point of strike
size to
Corner Side Center U0